Automobile enthusiasts and the companies that provide parts to the automotive enthusiast market are continually looking for ways to personalize and accessorize automobiles. Common accessories include enhanced aerodynamic body work, decorative wheels, tuned exhaust systems, and similar vehicle flair or “bling.” Enthusiasts further customize with after market paint and color schemes and with gas discharge tubes to create an under-body glow. Further still, an enthusiast can add lighting and/or illumination to the wheels to enhance the aesthetics of the wheels in lower light environments. Installing this final form of customization, however, is not a trivial task.
Operational challenges associated with wheel lighting and illumination system include providing energy to the lighting elements, securely mounting the components to the wheel, and controlling the operation of the lighting or illumination system. Existing lighting and illumination systems employ a plurality of lamps that are individually mounted on the wheel rim. The lamps are connected to a control module that is mounted on the wheel inside the tire. The lamps are connected to a receiver or power source via shared wires or dedicated wires that are routed through the wheel to the inner tire chamber. The receiver can cause the lights to flash on and off in unison or sequentially and control the amount of current to the lamps to modulate the intensity of the light. Integral to this design is a switch that activates the system when the vehicle wheel is rotating, presumably to preserve battery charge when the vehicle is not in use.
Locating a control module on a wheel inside a tire is particularly challenging in that the control module must be connected to the lighting elements and power supply. For either case, there must be a connection through the wheel. The same enthusiasts that would be interested in such a lighting or illumination system would most likely be deterred from using such a system if it required, for example, drilling holes in the wheel to route wires. Further, without additional control features, the most sophisticated operation possible by the wheel lighting or illumination system is based on a pre-programmed scheme or dependent upon movement in the wheel. There is no way for the enthusiast to manually alter the lighting while, for example, driving.